The Most Revd Nicholas Okoh, who believes that Christianity is under attack from Islam, was elected primate of Nigeria earlier this month, making him one of the powerful figures in Anglicanism.
Nigeria, where the Anglican church has 17 million adherents, is split between Christianity and Islam.
The country has been riven with religious strife in recent years, notably in the predominantly Muslim north.
In a sermon in Beckenham, Kent, in July he spoke of African Christians being “surrounded by Islamic domination”.
In extracts quoted by The Times, he said: “They spend a lot of money, even in places where they don’t have congregations, they build mosques, they build hospitals, they build anything.
“They come to Africans and say, ‘Christianity is asking you to marry only one wife. We will give you four’.”
He went on: “That is the type of evangelism they are doing: mass-production, so if you have four wives, four children, sixteen children, very soon you will be a village.”
A former Lieutenant Colonel in the Nigerian army, Archbishop Okoh was in 1979.
As Archbishop of Nigeria’s Bendel Province, he was one of the prime movers in the Gafcon meeting of conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem last year.